Florida Stewards

Florida Stewards highlights the people working to protect the wildlife and wildlands of Florida's heartland. These are the men and women who take to the wild places with well-worn boots, sweaty brows, and dirty hands. These are the biologists, land managers, artists, and others who work to understand, protect, and live with Florida’s natural wonders. Let’s celebrate them, support them, and learn from their examples. Or better still, let’s join them and live each day as Florida Stewards.

Saving Imperiled Species

These researchers work to understand and protect the imperiled species of the region.

Working Wildlands

Private cattle ranches are important for the health of Florida's wildlife and for the ecosystem services they provide us. Agro-ecology researchers work to understand the environmental trade-offs inherent in ranching, while promoting the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of working ranches.

Citizen Science and Volunteering

Understanding Nature

Ecosystems are like ever-changing puzzles with the pieces faced down. Science is how we start flipping them upright. These researchers are trying to understand the web of life and it's many interactions.

The Sentinel Landscape

Military lands are also conservation lands in the headwaters of Florida's Everglades. The Avon Park Air Force Range, covering over 100,000 acres, actively maintains its land for endangered species and hires biologists to nurture their populations.

Artists, Archaeologists, and other Allies

Ecological studies and land management may be the direct actions needed to fulfill the physical needs of wildlife, but successful conservation is interdisciplinary. Artists, archaeologists, and others help us understand our story, the story of people and our place in the landscape.